I’ve recently been re-playing through the Mass Effect trilogy on my Playstation. If you’ve never played through it, then it’s your loss. Go and do it. ASAP.
Good for you, you may be thinking, but why bother telling us? And that’s a fair question. Gaming and business don’t get spoken about much in the same sentence. Or paragraph for that matter.
Yet I think if we’re in business there are a few useful things we can take across from the gaming world.
To be specific, grinding and levelling up are concepts that occur in both the gaming and business worlds, and getting your head round how they interact can give you confidence and hope as you move forward.
GRINDING
When a business starts up, you’re running around doing everything. And I mean everything. Banking, customer service, complaints, marketing, admin – the whole caboodle.
It can feel like you’re running in quicksand and never getting anywhere. But slowly, slowly you make progress. The customers, and the profits, start stacking up, and things get done.
Just like in gaming. You grind along and even though things are tough, you keep killing the enemies and achieving the goals. Until, when you reach a certain point, you get to….
LEVEL UP
And you’ve done it. Your character’s qualities get a boost. Or you get a new weapon. And suddenly things get easier. Those enemies you struggled to defeat early on are now falling before you with seemingly little effort. You’re getting through missions you might not have stood a chance on before.
In business, maybe that levelling up has come through being able to afford that member of staff. Suddenly your business has had a huge time boost. Big problems seem smaller. You’ve got more time and more expertise in the business. It feels like you’re crushing it.
And then you grind at this new level, and you get to level up again. And again you’re on a whole other business level.
Gaming and business. Not so different after all, maybe.
And finally….
Sometimes you end up starting off from the beginning all over again. Maybe, sadly, the business failed. Or maybe you grew and sold it.
In the gaming world, sometimes you get a ‘New Game +’ option. The chance to start a new game but carrying over all the skills and abilities you build up during the old game.
Business works like that as well. You know more than you did before. You won’t struggle so much. You know the answers to questions you didn’t before. You’ll move quicker, smarter, and with purpose.
Gaming and business. There you go.
